Photonic Beamforming in Ultra-Wideband Phased Antenna Arrays: Present State and Perspectives

This paper reflects the state-of-the-art of new and rapidly growing field, dealing with beamforming in ultra-wideband (UWB) phased antenna arrays (PAA) based on photonic technology. Principal attention is focused on active phased antenna arrays radiating/receiving ultra-wideband and ultra-short radio- and video-pulses of ~1 ns time duration, named in the paper RP PAA and VP PAA, correspondingly. For both RP PAA and VP PAA the critical problems of insertion losses and thermal stability are characterized. Estimations made for insertion losses and thermal stability of true time delays in RP PAA and VP PAA fiber-optic beamforming systems confirm the practicability of photonic beamforming in UWB RP PAA and UWB VP PAA